y when he met his
poor parents and his sweetheart, but, although they said nothing, they
felt that he thought himself their superior. Possibly he was a little
stiff, he was built that way.

Well, the official ceremonies were over, but the students also had
decided to pay homage to the heroes, who had returned home after a
prolonged absence. And they went to the capital in full force.

Students are queer people, who read books and study under Dr. Know-all;
consequently they imagine that they know more than other people. They
are also young, and therefore they are thoughtless and cruel.

The respectful and sensible speeches which the old professors had been
making all the afternoon in honour of the explorers had come to an end,
and the procession of the students had started.

The leadsman and his sweetheart were sitting on a balcony in the company
of the other great men. The ringing of the church bells and the booming
of the guns mingled with the sound of the bugles and the rolling of
the drums; flags were waving and fluttering in the breeze. And then the
procession marched by.

It was headed by a ship, with sailors and everything else belonging to
it; next walruses came and polar bears, and all the rest of it; then
students in disguise, representing the heroes; the Great Man himself was
represented in his fur coat and goggles. It wasn't quite respectful, of
course; it wasn't a very great honour to be impersonated in this way;
but there it was! It was well meant, no doubt. And gradually every
member of the expedition passed by, one after the other, all represented
by the students.

Last of all came the leadsman. It was true, nobody could ever have
dreamt of calling him handsome, but there is no need for a man to be
handsome, as long as he is an able leadsman, or anything else able.
The students had chosen a hideous old grumbler to impersonate him.
That alone would not have mattered; but nature had made one of his arms
shorter than the other, and his representative had made a feature of
this defect. And that was too bad; for a defect is something for which
one ought not to be blamed.

But when the fool who played the leadsman approached the balcony, he
said a few words with a provincial accent, intended to cast ridicule on
the leadsman, who was born in one of the provinces. It was a silly thing
to do, for every man speaks the dialect which his mother has taught him;
and it is nothing at all to be ashamed of.

Eve